The Declaration is read on the streets amid cheers; it is read in churches with thanksgiving and praise; it is read in the legislative halls of the states, and at the firesides of patriots; it is read in the camp of the soldier, and by officers to their battalions; it is proclaimed by the congress of the new nation, and from the house-tops to all mankind. It is the second child of a man who has on his hands the "BUSINESS OF A WORLD."
Now let the nation buckle on its armor, and look forward to peace won only in blood. The Declaration of Independence is an easy thing compared with what is to come. We shall see this man's work in war.
Washington is at the head of the army; John Adams, whose head is a perfect battery of war forces, is at the head of the board of war. Upon this man's office depends more than any other in the nation, for he is Secretary of War. Mr. Paine has no office, no power of position, not known to the nation, nor to the world, for Common Sense was thought to be the production of Franklin or John Adams. Thomas Paine had great faith in Washington, not so much in Lee. John Adams distrusted Washington, and called him "a dolt," but put great confidence in Lee, an English deserter, and more than an American traitor. Paine never misjudged a man; John Adams never judged a man rightly. As colonies, this country has done much for independence; as a nation, nothing. She is now to be tried.
Paine enlists as a soldier with the "Flying Camp."
The British fleet is repulsed from Charleston, S.C., and can not land her army of English, Scotch, and Hessians; but now, in August, she effects a landing on Long Island. Washington is there with twenty thousand men with guns, but no soldiers in arms. He loses a battle on Long Island, and retreats therefrom. In October, he loses the battle of White Plains. In November, Fort Washington, with two thousand six hundred men, and our best cannon and arms are taken by the British command, and Fort Lee falls, leaving commissary and quartermasters' stores and cannon in the hands of the British. Washington now retreats through the Jerseys, the British hard after. As they retreat, Paine writes at night on a drum-head. In nineteen days, "often in sight and within cannon-shot of each other, the rear of the one employed in pulling down bridges, and the van of the other in building them up," Washington effected a march of ninety miles. The weather was severe, the roads bad, and his army without blankets, tents, or provisions. In four months his army dwindles from twenty thousand down to less than three thousand. In the meantime, the Indians have been committing ravages on the frontier, and in the heart of the country a great party demand absolute submission. The Quakers oppose the war. There is no money to pay soldiers, nor clothing to put on them; they are poorly armed, and there is but little powder to put in the guns. Congress has only voted for battalions, and there is an enemy "in the nation's bowels" that votes can not resist. After Congress had voted for battalions, it took its flight from Philadelphia to Baltimore, destroying public credit and throwing upon Washington the responsibility of directing all things relative to the operations of the war. The fate of the nation rests in the balance; the beam is not equally poised, the nation is going down. Washington is beyond the Delaware; the Hessians are at Trenton. He makes a stand to look into the faces of but "twenty-four hundred men strong enough to be his companions." And on the 20th of December, he tells a voting and cowardly Congress: "Ten days more will put an end to this army." These are "black days."
Where now are the hopes of America? Where are the committeemen who took the Declaration of Independence into Congress? Franklin has gone to France to work for the nation; Jefferson has refused to go with him, and is at home in Virginia safe with his slaves. But where is John Adams, who said that Jefferson had stolen his ideas from him to put into the Declaration of Independence? Where is the chief representative from New England, this "Colossus" of debate, this chief of the war committee? Where is John Adams in this darkest hour of his country's trial? He has deserted her; he went home on the 13th of October after the first reverse, and is "brave in his home by the sea," but will not come back till four months are past, and Washington makes himself famous. The poor dupe to his passions. Lee he loved, Washington he hated; a patriot this, a traitor that. But where is the man who has on hand the business of a world? We shall see. In this midnight of the revolution he has been writing something. He has been in the army as a soldier, but has found time to write. It is his first crisis, and it runs thus:
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation left with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph." He produces one of his most masterly pieces. He appeals to Heaven, and prays for some Jersey maid, like Joan of Arc, to spirit up her countrymen. He deals the king and Lord Howe heavy blows, deftly laid on; and of the tory, he says: "Good God! what is he? Every tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of toryism." Having reviewed the enemies of the country he then "turns with the warm ardor of a friend to those who have nobly stood and are determined to stand the matter out." ... "Let them call me rebel and welcome," says he, "I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the miseries of devils were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man." In this he also pays a tribute to Washington, in which he says: "God has given him a mind that can flourish upon care." "The heart that feels not now is dead, the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back now." "I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength by distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm will pursue his principle unto death." "By perseverance and fortitude we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission, the sad choice of a variety of evils—a ravaged country, a depopulated city, habitations without safety, and slavery without hope; our homes turned into barracks and bawdy houses for Hessians, and a future race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented."
This little pamphlet was dated Dec. 23, 1776. It was read at the head of the regiments which made up the small remnant of Washington's army. On Christmas night, Washington recrosses the Delaware, and strikes the Hessians at Trenton the next morning. His horse is shot under him, but he wins his first battle and takes nearly a thousand prisoners, eight cannon, and twelve hundred small arms. A few days afterward, Washington struck the British at Princeton, who lost in killed and wounded two hundred, and of prisoners the Americans took two hundred and thirty. Many of Washington's best soldiers being now quite barefoot and badly clad, and the winter weather severe, he closed the first campaign made glorious for freedom by the pen of that man who had undertaken the "business of a world."
But in the fall and winter before this his pen was not idle. The new Constitution of Pennsylvania had distracted the State, and Paine tries to bring order out of chaos. He is not unmindful of the Quakers, who will not obey the teachings of their religion and remain neutral, and it is a severe chastisement he gives them, for he talks to them as one having authority.
Five weeks after the first campaign was ended John Adams came back to Congress, not willing to be called "a sunshine patriot" in his home by the sea. But it was not cowardice which made this chief of the war committee desert his post in the most trying months of his country—it was downright meanness of the temper. I mention him again here because in April this year, 1777, he makes a motion that Thomas Paine be made secretary to the committee on foreign affairs. Mr. Paine went on duty. This was, doubtless, brought about by Benjamin Franklin, who is now in France to secure the favors of the government, and as secrecy is the success of diplomacy, Franklin wants Paine to receive his dispatches, for in him he can trust. It was while in this office, as detective, that he was made acquainted with the misconduct of Silas Deane. The stores which Mr. Deane obtained from France were a gift to this country, but he afterward brought in a demand for them, fraudulently pretending that he had purchased them. This was in December, 1778. On the 29th of this month Mr. Paine began a series of letters in the Pennsylvania Packet entitled, "Common Sense to the Public on Mr. Deane's Affairs." He did this to protect the Government, and took the responsibility upon himself to save other parties. He began by saying of Mr. Deane, "as he rose like a rocket he would fall like a stick." Three letters had made their appearance when Mr. Paine was commanded to appear before Congress. The President inquired of him, "Did you write this piece?" "I am the author of that piece," responded Paine. "And this? and this?" "I am." "You may retire." The Congress tried to dismiss him. It was a tie vote. The next day, the 8th of January, 1779, Mr. Paine wrote to Congress as follows: "As I can not consistently with my character as a freeman, submit to be censured unheard, therefore to preserve that character and maintain that right, I think it my duty to resign the office of secretary of the committee for foreign affairs, and I do hereby resign the same."